Implementing syndromic surveillance and patient safety systems in healthcare informatics

Technology and Healthcare

Please see the attached case and answer 1a with it. also answer questions 2 and 3

Implementing a syndromic surveillance system & Case Study 3: Selection of a patient safety strategy

How the projects address current problems in health informatics

One of the most common problems with implementing a new informatics system is creating a cohesive network. In "Case Study 13: Implementing a syndromic surveillance system," all of the hospitals involved in the IT overhaul had different systems, with different vendors and data sets. There were also radically different levels of knowledge and willingness amongst staff members to devote time, money, and manpower to support the new interface. Federal grants would support the initial implementation, but it still needed to be financially sustainable and the staff needed to know how to analyze the data correctly at all of the member hospitals. Each hospital had widely different patient needs, which affected the way the system would be implanted, given that the purpose of the system was to draw upon existing electronic data to diagnose patients. To ensure complete information was recorded, all hospitals had to report data in a consistent and uniform fashion. Privacy controls that could be implemented system-wise were also required.

However, "Case Study 3: Selection of a patient safety strategy" shows how even within a single institution, conflicts regarding hospital informatics can arise. In this case, the conflict revolved around allocation of resources to technological improvements. One faction desired a long-term, complete overhaul of the entire system to improve patient safety. The other faction believed that implementing 'smart' pumps alone soon as possible should be the focus of the reforms, and a full-scale overhaul would take too long. This shows a typical conflict between 'short-term' and 'long-term' thinking regarding scarce hospital resources.

Despite the problems and conflicts generated within an organization when a new technology is implemented, the costs of not reforming existing record-keeping and procedures are far greater, in terms of incomplete medical records and compromised patient care. "Better use of IT is no panacea, but there's scarcely a problem in the health system it can't improve" (EMR, 2005, Open Clinical).

Q3. Interfacing electronic billing records with electronic clinical records

Interfacing electronic billing records and clinical records reduces errors, effectively creating a 'double' bookkeeping system of patient treatments and complaints, and provides a complete database from which to draw from regarding electronic diagnoses and financial planning for the institution. It reduces the risk there will conflicting records and creates a complete "data and information trail that can be readily analyzed for medical audit, research and quality assurance, epidemiological monitoring, disease surveillance" (EMR, 2005, Open Clinical).